Connecticut's impoverishment continues, as was recognized the other day by Hartford's school system, which decided to offer free breakfast and lunch to all students because more than half of them qualify as impoverished, the federal government will pay for it all, and keeping track of who qualifies and who doesn't is no longer worth the trouble.

It was the right decision -- somebody has to feed the kids, and some schools in Connecticut are already providing not only free breakfast and lunch but dinner as well. Indeed, some schools also are providing medical and dental services to their students, and good for them, since, again, somebody has to.

But this stuff raises urgent questions the rest of government is ignoring: Where are all this poverty and child neglect coming from and how can they be reversed? Why do so many kids today have poor parents or none at all?

How can it be a problem of a lousy economy? The federal and state administrations are both controlled by the "party of the people" and say the economy is great. (Of course that also means poverty no longer can be blamed on anyone named Bush or Reagan.) So what is it exactly and what can be done about it?

Eighty years ago during the Depression the journalist Upton Sinclair ran for governor of California on a platform called End Poverty in California. As Sinclair was a socialist who became a Democrat only to help his candidacy (the technique was not invented by Bernie Sanders), his platform was nationalization of industry, a progressive state income tax, and old-age pensions. Connecticut and the country already have progressive income taxes and the country already has a good Social Security system. As for nationalization, this is not the week to argue for having the entity that runs the state Motor Vehicles Department run everything else as well.

So what should a campaign to end poverty in Connecticut do?

Probably it should inquire into why most poverty in Connecticut is a matter of fatherless families, why 40 percent of the kids being born in the state are being born outside marriage, and why the fatherlessness rate in the cities approaches 90 percent.

Most social science in recent years confirms the huge correlation between childbearing outside marriage and poverty, so ending poverty in Connecticut would begin with understanding what causes this phenomenon and induces people to have kids before gaining a committed spouse and the education and training necessary to earn an income sufficient to support a family. After all, the fatherlessness phenomenon is relatively recent. People began behaving this way in such large numbers only in the last four decades or so, a period corresponding with the vast increase in government financial support for people behaving this way -- cash, food credit cards, medical insurance, housing vouchers, and such.

Of course financial assistance from the government is necessary for people who have encountered unavoidable problems. But what about avoidable problems? What about poverty that is self-inflicted and facilitated by the availability of government assistance for what is really antisocial behavior? Why does government fail to distinguish between such situations?

Government will always get less of what it taxes and more of what it subsidizes. So to end poverty in Connecticut, first government must stop manufacturing it.

Until government stops manufacturing poverty, schools that are providing free meals may not be able to do much more for impoverished students than to have the teachers take the kids home with them at night.

As for why government hasn't realized all this, Sinclair explained it: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." If poverty was ever ended in Connecticut, half of government would be out of business.

"Shippwrekked (BR15-108'') (acrylic on fabric), by Brent Ridge, in show "Liz Gargas and Brent Ridge,'' at the New Art Center, Newton, Mass., March 4-April 10. The gallery says that Mr. Ridge "operates in a land of abstraction rooted in appropriation, landscape, and post-industrial aesthetics''

"Smoke" by Lisa Oppenheim

"Smoke'' (installation view, two-channel video, looped), by LISA OPPENHEIM, in the "Film as Medium and Metaphor'' show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Mass.

"The parody trailer by comedy network Above Average explores a world in which the dedicated Spotlight team finishes their work on sexual abuse in the Catholic church and investigates what else is wrong with Boston: everything."

Newport

'Better Angels: Firefighters of 9/11,' by Dawn Howkinson

'Better Angels: Firefighters of 9/11,' by Dawn Howkinson Siebel, at the Wood Museum, Springfield, Mass through July 10, 2016

Her work features 343 portraits, one for every New York City firefighter lost in the attacks on the World Trade Center. The images are along a 21-foot-long wall, allowing visitors to come face to face with men who made a living out of risking their own in order to save others.

"Saturday, March 21 (1965). Afternoon. Taken on my arrival in Selma {Ala, at the Brown Chapel area," by JAMES H. BARKER

"Saturday, March 21 {1965}. Afternoon. Taken on my arrival in Selma {Ala.}, at the Brown Chapel area," by JAMES H. BARKER, in the show "Through the Lens of History: Selma & Civil Rights,'' Grand Circle Gallery, Boston, through January.

"Consumable Sugarhouse,''

"Consumable Sugarhouse,'' in Norwich, Vt.

“A sap run is the sweet good-bye of winter”

"Window 60 Autumn,'' by Maira Reinbergs

"Window 60 Autumn,'' by Maira Reinbergs in the "Color Passages'' show at ArtProv gallery, Providence, through Feb. 17.

"Hydrogen 1,'' by Sarah Hulsey, in her show "Schemata"

"Hydrogen 1,'' by Sarah Hulsey, in her show "Schemata,'' at Chandler Gallery, Cambridge, Mass., through March 11.

An arrogant plutocrat for the masses; bees imperiled

How curious that middle- and lower-income Americans who feel with some justification that they have been treated with disdain by an increasingly arrogant and selfish plutocracy turn for leadership to a sleazy, arrogant and narcissistic member of the plutocracy.

"Frog Prince,'' by MAXFIELD PARRISH, at the show "The Power of Print,'' at the Currier Museum of Art, Manchester, N.H., through Jan. 10. Mr Parrish did much of his work in New England at the artists' colony in Cornish, N.H.

"Whale's Jaw, Dogtown,''

"Whale's Jaw, Dogtown,'' from the archives of the Cape Ann Museum, in Gloucester.

Mornings in Little Compton

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Mornings in Little Compton

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

Colored Stone History

by Lydia Davison Whitcomb

"Unihemispheric Existence''

"Unihemispheric Existence'' (detail) (steel, wood, gallery wall), by WILSON HARDING LAWRENCE, in the show "Nuanced: open-endedness, capaciousness and other provocative conditions of making,'' at the Dedee Shattuck Gallery, Westport, Mass., through

"The Market Is a Snake,'' by MICHAEL YEFKO, in the show "Further on Down the Yellow Brick Road,'' at Hera Gallery, in Wakefield, R.I., through June 20. In it he explores "temporal aspects of geometry.''

"Physicality'' (photography, oil, narrative text and resin on panel), by SHERRY KARVER, in her show "Objects of Affection,'' at Lanoue Gallery, Boston, through Oct. 31.

"Dream Work of Thomas Street''

(acrylic on panel), by SHAWN KENNEY

"Karl with Honeybears"

"Karl with Honeybears'' (oil on canvas), by DAVID PETTIBONE, at the Corey Daniels Gallery,

"smoke"

"Smoke'' (installation view, two-channel video, looped), by LISA OPPENHEIM, in the "Film as Medium and Metaphor'' show at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, Mass.

"Elevation'' (acryllic on canvas), by Diane Novetsky, in her show 'EARTHSHIFTER

"Nero''

"Nero'' (Marquina marble), by PAUL BLOCH

"New Orleans Sketchbook, March 1-17, 2007, Lower Ninth Ward

"New Orleans Sketchbook, March 1-17, 2007, Lower Ninth Ward,'' by JEFFREY MARSHALL, in the show "Katrina Then and Now: Artists as Witness,'' through Oct. 10, at Gerald Cantor Art Gallery, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester.

"Siberia Imagined and Reimagined"

Photo in Krasnoskamensk, Russia, March 2006, by SERGEY MAXIMISHIN, in the show "Siberia Imagined and Reimagined,'' at the Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, Mass., through Jan. 10.

"Arcology'' (detail; gouache and Lascaux acrylics on archival papers), by Ilona Anderson, in her show "Arcology,'' at Kingston Gallery, Boston.

"Resonance: book in time II''

"Resonance: book in time II'' show at Brickbottom Gallery, Somerville, Mass., Dec. 6-Jan. 16. It's a collection of individual and collaborative artists' books by Ann Forbush, Ania Gilmore and Annie Zeybekoglu.

"Civil Rights Marchers Walking from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, on Monday, March 23, 1965,'' photo by JAMES BARKER, in the show "Through the Lens of History: Selma & Civil Rights at the Grand Circle Gallery,'' Boston, through January.